Using Moonlight Graham as an example, here's the lowest win total the last 10 owners to appear in the WS: 69, 90, 55 (clearly had a 5-season downswing, but it was 15 seasons previous to WS), 65 (this would be your team, only season below 70 which is impressive for 26 seasons), 68, 79, 67, 71, 71, 55 (but first season, might have been a rollover takeover, and he won 82 the next year).

I don't think any of those 10 owners got to the WS through tanking. Only one of those owners had multiple 4th-place seasons in a row. It just seems to me that, in quality worlds, the owners who make WS appearances are usually consistent playoff teams, with the occasional down or rebuilding year.

Again, not saying tanking doesn't work. I'm just saying that, if you have a quality league with an involved commish and (as you mentioned) decent MWR rules, it's pretty rare for a tanker to actually execute the long-term tanking plan to a dynastic conclusion.

You could add into the tanking mentality, and correct me if it was already mentioned, but the owners who ignore the minors. I've been in leagues were a minor league level doesn't win 10 games. I know wins don't matter in the minors except to get your guys somemore playing time in the playoffs, but what I'm saying is that guys run the minimum number of players don't care about health or stamina, while teams that do try to field the (2 catchers, 5 starters, etc) team formula sometimes have to spend a little money to fill rosters when guys get hurt. It might not add up to much, but it is an advantage over teams that just completely abandon the minor leagues.

The scorched minors do impact the overall health of a world, as guys end up retiring from the MiL player pool because they don't get signed (while teams have 0% rosters with many slots open). That means it becomes harder and harder for everyone to fill MiL teams. So it's a viscous cycle.

Posted by real_toddb on 2/27/2013 11:04:00 AM (view original):You could add into the tanking mentality, and correct me if it was already mentioned, but the owners who ignore the minors. I've been in leagues were a minor league level doesn't win 10 games. I know wins don't matter in the minors except to get your guys somemore playing time in the playoffs, but what I'm saying is that guys run the minimum number of players don't care about health or stamina, while teams that do try to field the (2 catchers, 5 starters, etc) team formula sometimes have to spend a little money to fill rosters when guys get hurt. It might not add up to much, but it is an advantage over teams that just completely abandon the minor leagues.

My minor league teams all finish last in the division every single year. My LoA was 13-131. I sign enough players (usually 10 position players and 13-15 pitchers) to have eligible rosters, but other than that, I just check in every couple of real-life weeks to make sure that my prospects are playing and not below 95% fatigue and that my pitchers aren't all zeroed out. I have no problem playing a non-prospect down to whatever fatigue.

Minor leagues don't mean anything. I absolutely won't sign any more players or waste any game resources or personal time on the minors. Their performance doesn't matter. If there were some kind of incentive (which, for the record, I think there should be) that made the minors meaningful, I would pay attention to them. But there's not, so I don't.

I definitely won't spend any more than I have to on minor league salary. AAA guys are 50k, so signing or promoting an extra 6 just so I can rest guys who will never play ML doesn't make any sense. That's an extra 300k and I often don't have that to spare. Yes, it is an advantage over teams who spend more on their minors and that's why I do it. Why wouldn't you play for every little advantage?

There is another side to it. I have no legit prospects in AA in Cooperstown. My pitching zeroed out about 50 games into the season. I fixed it at the A/S break. It will be zeroed out again relatively soon. I see no point in fixing it again.

A good lesson about socialism can be learned here. Anytime something artificial enters a system to fix a problem, new problems occur. The powers that be feel the need to help out bad teams by guarunteeing them a high draft pick. Sounds great right? Then people just figure out how to game the fix and create a worse problem than you had before.

Probably the only way to fix this problem is to have open bidding on all amateurs. May not feel like real baseball, but at least it gets rid of the central planning and brings in a loophole-proof free market.

In SLB progressive leagues, they are allowed to do whatever they want with the draft to help discourage tanking. For instance, I was in a league that randomized the bottom 8 draft picks (teams who made the playoffs) and randomized the top 16 picks (teams who didn't make the playoffs). Getting the #1 pick in a SLB progressive is a much bigger prize than in HBD and they're still pretty happy with it. I'll ask about what other methods they use. I highly doubt admin would ever go for a free market, which would be best, but they may be willing to allow a customized draft.

A suggestion that might fix the tanking would be a more randomly determined potential level for draft choices in later innings. Its been brought up countless times, but were are the Mike Piazza's of HBD? Diamond in the rough, for all the guys I've seen takes a guy who would be a career HiA and makes him a career AA. I don't think we should have supermen, or the console game create a player types, but if there is a little more potential to make a mistake in the draft, or to pick later in the rounds and still have a shot a someone who could contribute at the BL level in rounds 10 through whatever every few seasons would help mitigate damage done by tanking teams. Also I think that its a problem with teams that run less than 40 million payrolls and trade away everyone, they have a huge advantage in signing IFA's due to the excess payroll. I would like to see a minimum payroll instituted by worlds.

Minimum win requirements work. But that's probably not practical for all of HBD.

Another way to "randomize" the draft would be to take the bottom 16(or 18 or 20 or 22), look at last season's draft order and reverse it. Meaning the team that had the #1 pick would be picking 16th, 18th, 20th or 22nd depending on how many teams you throw into the pool.

It would prevent teams from collecting several high draft picks in consecutive seasons. Of course, it will be gamed but any system that's understood will be.

As for payroll, a floor seems like the "best" way to work it but, by itself, it sucks. Spend 40m on crap and you still get a high pick and have the most money for IFA.

As for payroll, everyone has the opportunity to budget the way they want. It doesn't make any more sense to complain about people who budget a lot of money for IFAs than to complain about people who budget a lot of money for FAs. Just imagine the low payroll owners complaining about the 130mil payroll owners having an unfair advantage in the FA market. Would seem silly, no?